On the “Aesthetics” of Modernity

IF WE AFFIRM an objective aesthetic, that in the appearance of corporeal entities and elements there exist combinations that can be counted as objectively beautiful, and others that can be counted as objectively ugly, we can expose much of the Modern World as being aesthetically deficient.

One doesn’t need to trawl through MPC’s ‘Institute for Advanced Homophobia‘ to know that many of the practices pursued by sexual deviants are abhorrent, unhygienic, and disgusting to whoever dares to think about them for even a split second. Most mentally stable individuals experience an automatic, reflexive revulsion when they think of human feces, or urine, or sex with children, or necrophilia, and the list goes on. One by one, we’re supposed to accept such things as individual sexual preferences lest we purvey hatred. We are told that such things excite others, and even if they trigger the exact opposite reaction in us, this should be suppressed, and in fact may represent some unhealthy mental condition on our part. Can we not see the beauty in transgendering a nine year old?

A similar thing can be said about abortion. There is a reason abortion is not advertised using images from the procedure or its result. Humans typically find images of other dead humans distressing, and this distress intensifies the younger the subject in question. There is a visceral response when we see harmless human beings dissected or dismembered. This is why the aesthetic aspects of abortion are concealed, because it is something that everyone bar the most hardcore leftist finds aesthetically revolting. There is an aesthetic dimension to its morality.

Just as there is an organic moral base for mankind, there is also an organic aesthetic base which at the very least extends to the broad spiritual race. On average, people from Belarus have similar concepts of beauty to the French. It is very possible for an Italian to marvel at St. Basil’s Cathedral, and a Russian to admire the Coliseum, even though both are culturally distinct architectural styles.

This isn’t to claim any drive for aesthetic purity. There are ugly things that are necessary to our lives, and ugly things we should care about, but in the aggregate, to promote and look fondly upon an objective aesthetic is a very positive thing. Note that beauty is not synonymous with salaciousness, nor vanity. Beauty is just another way that through a Traditional mode of living, we ape the Divine Realm and the wonders of eternal perfection beyond. We cannot reach such a level of course, but we try, and treasure all that falls close.

In the meantime, the Cathedral [of “liberal” orthodoxy — Ed.] busily promotes the ugliest aspects of society’s underbelly to the masses. Disease-ridden whores are enthroned in pop culture, food is continually downgraded into a mass-produced paste, it’s ‘cool’ to behave like ghetto trash, and this is all before we delve into ‘Modern Art.’ Beneficial to our cause would be to make a point of Modernity’s aesthetic inferiority, or at least its continued descent from objective standards of beauty, whether that’s women growing blue armpit hair, or marriage being reduced from religious ceremony to a formally officiated cuckolding at the county clerk’s office. Modernity just is ugly, and there isn’t much that can be done to escape from that conclusion.

What we should articulate is that this fact does not stem from a personal preference, but from an objectively informed, inborn preference. The things that our enemy strives for are not just immoral, unstable, ill-advised, treacherous, and undesirable. They are also hideous.

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Often, people find ‘old’ buildings beautiful, pleasing to the eye. Why is that, did we have better architects in the past? I think old buildings are indeed beautiful as throughout many generations, political systems, worldviews, no one bothered to take them down. These buildings were beautiful enough to survive. That means they must correspond with the innate standards of beauty of people. You could say, they are the manifestation of the people. One finds old buildings from other cultures also beatiful, as if there is a natural standard for beauty. Could it be beauty is not in the ‘eye of the beholder’, but is ruled by Nature? Different cultures, different architectures. Architecture as a manifestation of a people. What about modernity? The characteristic of modernity is that it does not… Read more »

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13 February, 2016 5:39 pm

Anthony Collins

One might say that modernity is the supremacy of anonymity over identity. Some of the things I’ve read about Christopher Alexander’s ideas on architecture and pattern languages sound interesting. For what it’s worth, the entry on “pattern language” at Wikipedia states: “A pattern language is an attempt to express the deeper wisdom of what brings aliveness within a particular field of human endeavor, through a set of interconnected expressions arising from that wisdom. Aliveness is one placeholder term for ‘the quality that has no name’: a sense of wholeness, spirit, or grace, that while of varying form, is precise and empirically verifiable.” Modern architecture lacks this quasi-organic quality of aliveness. But perhaps there is a pattern language in modern architecture which explains this lack of aliveness, which prescribes deadness, and… Read more »

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Today in History

17761776: Richard Henry Lee of Virginia presents the "Lee Resolution" to the Continental Congress. It reads in part: "Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved. That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances." What has been done with regard to one tyranny, can be done again with regard to another.